Right side up again

The epoxy coating on the outside of the hull is sufficiently cured at these high temps for Dutch standards.  So time to turn the hull right-side-up again.

The Peapod looks great this way.








But looking inside you see there is still a lot to do.

Next step will be again more cleaning and sanding followed by adding the cleats to keep the flotation pieces in place below the seats.

After that making the seats, finalizing the dagger board. epoxy coating etc. etc.

But now we will start on a trip to the German Wad and will be back in three weeks time. Depending on issues of interest to this blog and having an internet connection there may be a post the coming weeks.

Final epoxy layers on the outside

Today I sanded yesterdays epoxy with 100 grit to get the right "grip" for the next layer.

With 28 degree C outside my black shed was 35+ degrees inside.  Who needs a gym if he can sand under these circumstances.

My black Labrador George was seeking refuge from the sun under the garden table.

Normally you should wait between 2 and 4 hours till the surface gets sticky to put on the final layer. Today 60 minutes was enough.

Tomorrow I will turn the boat to be able to continue on the inside.
The coming weekend starts our holydays so don't count on much progress the coming days.

Finalizing the outside with white paint and varnish will be done in a later stage.

More epoxy layers

The last few days were filled with other activities. The most important being of course the second birthday of grandson Taeke.

Also I started as volunteer with a Dutch nature conservation trust for the maintenance of a nice estate they own in the neigbourhood of my future house.

One morning a week as unskilled laborer...
Fits in quite nicely with my boatbuilding skills  :-)

After some more sanding at last I put on the first coat of epoxy on top of the primer layer.  The weather is at the moment very sunny with temperatures above 25 C.

My boat shed is black so it is almost a sauna there now. Will see whether that has effect on the curing of the epoxy.


Tomorrow afternoon perhaps some light sanding and another coat of epoxy. 

If the weather remains the same there will be no sanding.  Too hot.




In the mean time we are preparing our holiday trip to the German Wad with our 26 ft Pilot.  Not a wooden boat I have to admit. Sometimes you have to be realistic.

Keel around daggerboard slot

Today it was fine painting weather. Dry and not too sunny.  So one long side of the house was painted but now I ran out of paint.

On the boat I added two short keel pieces around the daggerboard slot.  Some finetuning will be necessary but it looks nice.

Also some sanding done on the filler parts. Nice stuff this filler.  It gets rather smooth.

Tomorrow all depends on the weather. If it's nice it will be time for some boating.  Otherwise more work on the Peapod.

Filling dents

This morning I did fill several dents with epoxy filler.  This filler can be sanded after 24 hr so I continued sanding my house and finished one long side.

It was quite stormy so the sanding dust blew nicely away.

Depending on the weather I will tomorrow paint part of the house or sand the filled spots on the peapod.


Tomorrow evening we will attend the 90 year anniversary concert of the of the Dutch Bach Society so it will be a short working day anyhow.

Visiting follower

My follower Hans and his wife Lyn visited us today to check out the progress of building the Peapod and to discuss our coming holiday to the German Wadden.






So no building activities today. Maybe tomorrow, depending how long and liquid our discussions will be.

First epoxy coat

After some finishing touches with sandpaper I did the first layer op epoxy with "PolyPox Injecteer".

This is a kind of epoxy liquid that saturates the top layer of the wood.

Next step will be using epoxy filler to rectify dents and other mishaps.

With this first epoxy coat the boat start to look wooden.....

After filling and more sanding I want to apply at least two coats of epoxy.  The final paint coat for the outside will be done later. My present plan is to paint most of the outside white with maybe the sheerstrake in varnish.

First I will turn the boat again for finishing the inside. That means more cleaning and making the thwarts and side benches.

Still a lot of work to do.

Second badge on

Not much blogging activity the last few days.  Other things kept me busy.  I did paint one side of the house at last.

I did quite some cleaning and sanding again of the hull. Almost there to put the coat of penetrating epoxy on.  But first I finished carving the second badge and glued it on.

Tomorrow hopefully the finishing touches to the outside.

This weekend my youngest daughter and boyfriend were visiting us.

Her boyfriend helped me launching my Fearing and we went for a short sail to test the modifications I made during the winter.



Not bad at all. The Faering has no centreboard or daggerboard but the sailing into the wind went reasonably well.  Sailing half wind or more the boat goes "like the Fire Brigade"

The rudder / side tiller system still needs some improvement.  But first more work on the Peapod.

First badge on

The weather is getting better so only some work done in the shed early in the morning.

First I took all the screws out of the keel and bored the holes to 8 mm. After that I made sufficient bungs on the drill press and tried to glue them into the holes.  That was easier said than done.

It took me quite some time to get them in.  With softer wood they slide in relatively easy with a tap of a hammer.  Mahogony doesn't give in.  Apparently my bung drill is 8mm+ and my bore 8 mm-.  At last I succeeded.

Next step was sanding the first sheerstrake.  Reasonably good result.

I decided to glue in the first badge.  It is difficult to clamp the badge because of the breasthook.

Arch Davis suggests to use tiny nails at the stem side which I did.  To clamp the back end of the badge I used a nice contraption. Seems to work!

Now it is time to continue cleaning and sanding the side of my house. Depending on the weather I can maybe paint it tomorrow.

Keel

Now the intended name of the Peapod public is public my wife found a bib in a shop with the right name on it.  Will be cute with my grandchildren.

One of the floor boards was not perfect in. Apparently the ply did warp a little. When the glue was set the next morning there were some small gaps around but the floorboard did feel securely fastened. So I injected some epoxy around the edges.

To get a different perspective the boat was turned with help from my wife.

There is a lot of sanding to do before I can seal te epoxy but first I want to put a keel on the boat.

Arch Davis suggests in his notes to use a broad kevlar strip and set it in epoxy.

Although a good friend of my suggested me to take shares in  an epoxy company I am not that much an epoxy fan.

As I had a mahogany strip in store I decided to use that one.  Of course the keel has to be in two parts to keep the daggerboard slot open.

After some sculpting I first test screwed the keel on, did some minor adjustments and finallly glued / screwed the keel on.  Tomorrow I will get the screws out and bung the holes.

Finishing some details

First I want to show a photo my wife made a few days ago very early in the morning. From our home looking over the water.  No wind and foggy.  It looks like a painting from the Frysian painter Willem van Althuis.( www.willemvanalthuis.nl)

That is the environment we have to live at the moment. It is a dirty job, someone has to do it....

Today I painted the carved letters on the badges white. Bit dificult to see on the picture. When the paint is sufficiently dry tomorrow I will sand the badges as to make the letters "sharp" again.

Later the badges will be glued on the boat.




Also I glued in the final three floorboards using the "5 minute epoxy" for positioning. The last one gave some problems as the edges of the floorboard did not stay tight on the skin.  I finally decided to put my stationary sander on the floorboard to press it down but I don't think I succeeded all around.  Let's see tomorrow.

My plan is to very soon turn the boat again to place the keel and to seal the outside of the hull in epoxy.  I am a bit tired of cleaning the inside.  Maybe first doing the outside gives inspiration.

Future name of the boat

Name giving is something you do at the the official launch of the boat. The fact that we did already carve the nameplate aroused some curiousity with one of the followers.

The name will be Frisian and is inspired by the Little Captain that stayed with us the last two days. (including his parents and baby sister)

You can imagine him saying "Yo no soy marinero, soy capitán"  if his Spanish would be better....

The name I intend to give to the boat is Pakesizzer. 

Pake is Grandfather in Frysian and a Pakesizzer is someone who calls you Pake. 

This complicated way of reasoning implies someone who is the grandchild of a grandfather.



These badges will be glued on the sheerstrake against the bow stem.

I did glue the first floorboard using 5 min epoxy for positioning and instant fixing.

The process did not gave the result I had anticipated.  We will see tomorrow when the glue has cured.

A whole lot of gluing

This morning I went with son-in-law and grandson to "de Bootbouwer"  ( www.bootbouwer.nl ) a shop I mentioned before in this blog to do boy-things.

Among other things I bought folding rowlocks for the Peapod.  As the boat is mainly for sailing these were a good solution and also a good deal.

As expected my son-in-law was a very good help with gluing the sheerstrake moldings on. We positioned and clamped them only with 1 mm nails.

Arch Davis always puts a plywood decorative badge on the sheerstrake at bow and stern.  My plan is to put the only at the bow and use them as nameplate.

So I used a Dremel type of router to make the first one.  The end result was mediocre.  My son-in-law decided he could do it better by carving. I don't have carving chisels so he did it with straight chisels and also improved my badge.

You may want to know the name of the boat but that will be disclosed later.

Finally the oar lock and the daggerboard trunk were glued in the boat.  The trunk of course received an overdose of epoxy to be sure there will be no leakage.

Maybe tomorrow the floorboards will be put in followed by ..?...     Cleaning of course.

Details (2)

Today I glued the daggerboard trunk together. Next step will be gluing it to the keel.

Furthermore I did sculpt the daggerboard foil to an acceptable shape.  Cheking with the slot in the keel I found out that my daggerboard was almost 10 mm too wide so I cut it on the table saw.

The daggerboard now fits perfectly in the slot.

I continued cleaning the inside of the hull. Still more work to do.

Tomorrow I am travelling so no progress to expect.  Still the sheerstrake moldings to glue on.  As my middle daughter with husband and our two grandchildren are coming for a few days I think my son-in-law will be capable helping me gluing the moldings.

Details

Yesterday was the official birthday of our Queen.  A lot of parties and events throughout the country with a lot of people dressed in the colour orange. 

But now back to boat building and the phase of looking in and working on details.

First the second rub rail was glued and later on the screwholes bunged.

For the sheer strake molding (tiny rail placed at the downside of the sheerstrake) I drilled some 1 mm holes for 1.25 mm nails that I use for positioning the rails to cut them to the righ length and bevel at the ends.  Now these rails are test fitted on the boat with the nails just a few mm into the hull.  Next step is gluing the the rails to the boat and tap in and sink these nails.


Also I made the floorboards that are pieces of 4 mm ply that will be glued to the inside of the garboard between the thwarts.  Arch Davis suggest to use contact cement to position the floorboards while the epoxy cures.  So going to buy contact cement.

Finally I made the oarlocks.  These are basically two blocks glued and screwd to the sheerstrake and sheer stringer.

Arch uses the same wood as the keel but the Red Cedar I am using is not thick enough and I did not think that Red Cedar would be a good choice.

Luckily I had some oak from my previous project so I started cutting it the right size on my table saw.

At first I used a handsaw to make the various cuts. Normally I am addicted to my japanese saw but now I used the saw that my father used.

The first oarlock was allright but the second one was not good enough so I made a new one now using the tablesaw for some cuts. More accurate but also more noise.

After that I bored holes in the block, rounded the edges and test fitted them in the boat.

Not bad at all. Now first buy some oarlock fittings. I want to drill the holes for the fittings on the drillpress before gluing the blocks permanently to the boat.

If you are wondering what happened to the daggerboard trunk, I just gave the inside a third coat of epoxy.  Maybe a bit excessive but al least sufficiently sealed.